After the Storm
by Sky-In-The-Pie
Summary: Set after 3.06 'I Do'. This is a straight through continuation: what could've happened after the cliffhanger, but never would've! JackSawyer slash. Complete oneshot fic.


Disclaimer: I don't own Lost!

Rating: PG-13/T

Warnings: Slash! (i.e. male/male relationship)

Spoilers: Up and through 3.06 'I Do'. This is a straight-through continuation - what _could've_ happened after the huge cliffhanger, but never would've!

* * *

'After the Storm'

"_- If I don't get a call from you in the next hour, I'm gonna know something went wrong – and he dies!"_

"_I can't leave without you –"_

"_Yes you are – go."_

"_Jack, I can't!"_

"_Go, now!"_

"_But I can't! –"_

"_Kate, damn it, RUN!"_

"NO!" Kate screamed into the walkie talkie, voice frantic and her eyes round with fear. Pickett, presumably having had enough of waiting for action to be taken, had dived forwards in an attempt to grab the device from her, but Kate wrenched her hand away and took a step backwards into the cage, crying out as she did so.

"RUN, KATE!" There was Jack's voice again: insistent, frightening to hear.

"Jack, I can't, I can't, you have to listen to –"

"- Kate, I swear, if you never do anything else, you have to do this - now run, YOU HAVE TO RUN!" Jack's voice sounded almost insane in its urgency, even through the static of the walkie talkie; Kate stalled, momentarily lost for words to say or moves to make, and then –

"So go."

Her eyes still fixed on the walkie-talkie held close to her mouth, Kate heard Pickett's voice cut smoothly through the chaos. She froze as a rush of some unknown feeling washed numbly over her, and closed her eyes unconsciously. A newly fallen and paralysing quiet had settled over the group, only broken eventually by Jack's shouting - though growing dim and hoarse, Kate now realised it had never ceased.

"Go, Kate. You heard the doctor, he wants you to run." Kate's eyes never left the walkie-talkie and she made no acknowledgement of Pickett's words. She didn't need to. He knew that Kate could hear the smirk in his voice. "Hell, just about everybody here seems to want you to run. Even your boyfriend here wants you to run…" He waved the gun in his hand in Sawyer's direction, "So run. Go. Nothin' stopping you."

And the silence descended again. Slowly, Kate looked up; she noted the men around her, noted the guns, and then noted Sawyer's face, blank and emotionless, his eyes staring into hers and stunning her momentarily. It seemed for a second as if his features were mirroring hers: there was too much to express, so instead they expressed nothing at all. Just emptiness. Kate watched as his eyes lowered to the walkie talkie in her hand and his face grew, if anything, even more guarded. She wanted him to communicate with her in some way, give her something definite, but he was completely unreadable, for the first time that she had seen - Sawyer was _always_ easy to decipher, he couldn't help it, so this, here, defeated her. But there were no words to say, so she simply found her gaze still inexplicably locked on him.

"_Kate, Kate, listen to me, god damn it, are you there? Kate! What's -?"_

"Jack." Now, finally, there was something in Kate's eventual reply which caught Jack, had made him falter; but it was too late. In that split-second moment, during which only the solitary crackle of the walkie talkie managed to signify a kind of unattainable understanding between the two of them, Kate had broken.

Gripping her cage bars to steady herself as hot tears streamed down her face, she spoke the words she had been fighting since their captivity, and this time, Jack did not interrupt. She told him how she couldn't save him, how she couldn't save Sawyer, and how she couldn't save anyone else on the island - because they were all trapped, wherever they were. _Separate islands and separate lives_, she mentioned, and that she was sorry, and there was nowhere to go and no way to escape, and _I love you, Jack, but I can't save you._

And then there was a short pause before Sawyer moved.

At the same time, Pickett took a quick step forwards and snatched the walkie out of Kate's loose grip. But as he turned, he met Sawyer's fist and staggered, losing control of the situation for a split second. Sawyer now made his own bid for the walkie talkie that seemed to hold so much importance for them all, and stopped short, realising he could still hear Jack's voice, distant and crackling but constant, through the madness.

"… _take Sawyer… Kate, you have to tell Sawyer –"_

Almost before this had time to register, Sawyer felt the jab of a gun in the small of his back, and the walkie talkie lurched out of his hand to the ground, where it remained, destroyed as suddenly as the action had begun. Its crackling stuttered then ceased entirely, and Sawyer sensed, with a horrible feeling, that their only lifeline had just broken with it. Pickett stopped too, also aware of a kind of finality the last stutter of the machine implied, and a glance over at Kate's hollow face confirmed Sawyer's expectations.

Pickett was back in power now, and he knew it. "You're not running, Kate." His gun was still pressed into Sawyer's back, and a horrible leer began to play on his face. "I were you, I'd run while I'd had the chance." He was talking because he could, insulting because it made him feel powerful. He'd managed to turn Jack's plan on its head in letting Kate go, because he knew she couldn't, and _wouldn't_.

The offer to go was made to Kate alone: whatever Kate's decision might be, Sawyer would be as trapped as before. And whatever Kate's decision might be, either Sawyer or Jack would die. If she did indeed run, she knew Pickett would make sure she witnessed Sawyer's death first; if she stayed, Jack would let Ben die – and the chances of him being allowed to live after killing their leader didn't even really exist. And if she tried to run _with_ Sawyer… well, she doubted they'd get far past the cages.

So once again, Kate did not reply. For a long time, she simply stood still, her eyes focused on somewhere unseen and her hands' grip on the cage bars white. Then she murmured something almost inaudible, which Pickett could not catch – but Sawyer did.

"Live together, die alone."

Sawyer stiffened suddenly. He opened his mouth then closed it again, thinking better of what he intended to say – honestly, he felt that he could curse Jack for that saying. "Freckles, it ain't gonna work." He didn't look at her.

"So what is." It was a statement, and Sawyer let Kate prove her point. "Live together, die alone," she repeated.

"You can't-"

"Live together-"

"-Die alone." This time, both Sawyer and Kate's heads whipped round. Standing a few metres away from the haphazard group of people was Jack.

He was wearing what was unmistakeably a doctor's coat, covered in flecks of blood; his face was sweating and he was breathing heavily, Sawyer could tell, from the rise and fall of his chest. The other half of the broken walkie-talkie dangled from his left hand, abandoned.

His eyes closed and opened again slowly, as Juliet appeared behind him and pressed the barrel of a gun into his back. He had been expecting this. Neither Sawyer nor Kate could work out why Jack had left the operating room to find them, but then, maybe Jack hadn't bargained on seeing Sawyer being held at gunpoint or Kate clinging to her cage to stay conscious. Or maybe he knew his plan was failing, and he simply needed to be there, with them. Either way, it seemed irrelevant now. The thought of one of them moving anywhere had become deadly, so all they could do was stay rooted to their spots, waiting for some indiscernible new moment.

It dawned on Sawyer that Jack was now standing directly opposite him, and a few seconds later, he realised that Jack was staring fixedly at him. He met Jack's intent gaze, and briefly wondered at their situation: how two men who teased each other about funny-looking glasses and poker, and who fought over guns and power, could be standing here with their lives in the mercy of the two people behind them. A few moments passed, and then Sawyer suddenly raised his eyebrows at him – and smiled. It was so subtle that it could barely be called a smile, but he knew Jack had noticed, although his face didn't betray anything. Kate had noticed too, a flicker of confusion passing across her features. It was almost an odd gesture of reassurance, she thought.

Next, Sawyer cocked his head, ever so slightly, and said, "Live together, Jack?"

Now Kate was strangely unsettled: the tone in his voice was different, more significant than anything she had heard from him before. And 'Jack' Since when did Sawyer refer to Jack as anything other than 'Doc'…?

But Jack gave a long, slow nod at Sawyer's words, its meaning definite and solid somehow; there was no hint of a question present as their world stood still for just a second.

"Absolutely", he replied.

And that was that.

Without warning, Sawyer was kicking the man behind him and running across the empty space towards Jack, while Jack had followed Sawyer's lead and tripped up Juliet. They collided midway, and then Sawyer had pulled Jack to him and they were kissing, desperately and forcefully – Sawyer stumbled, but regained his footing enough to pull Jack down to the ground on top of him, not caring how much it hurt to throw his full body weight onto the hard ground below. He wrapped his arms around Jack's torso and pushed their bodies together, while Jack's hands found their way to either side of Sawyer's face and his tongue swirled and battled with his for control. They both felt it engulf them: the simple, physical and pulsing connection, their touch; for a few moments, Jack was Sawyer and Sawyer was Jack, and that was all that mattered.

They didn't look up to see Kate's stunned face, or Pickett and Juliet's disbelief. They didn't much care. Sawyer opened his eyes and just let Jack kiss him briefly without responding, until Jack broke the kiss and opened his eyes too. So they simply looked, their faces flushed and their pupils dark and dilated, taking in all the details they could. Then Sawyer's mouth brushed again against Jack's, and they savoured that tiny and indescribable moment of noses and mouths and skin barely touching. Jack's breath was hot against Sawyer's cheek, and he could feel his body heat radiating on top of him. There was something so perfect about being this close to him that made Sawyer dizzy, always did, but it was more than that; it was something he couldn't articulate, but was there all the same, and it made him part his lips once more and let Jack take him again, because he needed to, regardless of what was about to happen next.

So when they both broke off for air, it was Sawyer who spoke. "Fuck, Jack, what is this?" His eyes tried to smile again, seeking confirmation of some, any, kind, but Jack didn't reply, so he drew his mouth up to Jack's and mumbled against his lips.

"I sure as hell don't know what's going on here. But this is _it_, ain't it."

Jack pulled away slightly and looked at Sawyer unblinkingly. "This is what, Sawyer."

Sawyer didn't answer his question, but murmured against his mouth again. "I'll die a happy man, Jack."

When Juliet looked up next, it was clear Kate had made her decision and run. But she wasn't surprised – after all, running was what Kate did… No, what overwhelmed her was how wrong they had all been. She didn't know whether the two men lying within each other, only metres away, were kissing for the first time, the hundredth time, or the last time, but all that mattered is that they were, and she couldn't fathom it.

She couldn't fathom that Jack could have stopped hurting, or that Sawyer could have found his peace… she didn't understand that two pieces in the largest and most distorted jigsaw could finally find the piece they were meant to be next to, here on this island. But…

Settling her gaze back on the two, she vaguely considered that in another situation, the scene before her would be disquieting, uncomfortable to watch… here, though, she just felt somehow heavy. She wondered if Kate had known, or if there had even been anything to know before now, and furrowed her brow. She needed to make some of this fit, in her own mind, but she couldn't work out how to.

Jack's voice drifted over to her through her mess of thoughts. He and Sawyer were now laying side by side in the mud and dirt, and both were coated in it.

"Sawyer?" she heard him ask softly.

"Yeah?"

Jack bit his lip and gave him a strange sort of smile. He suddenly seemed to have sensed a lapse in the awful tension – and perhaps there was one, because he and Sawyer had made it so.

"You look like a fucking mess."

And his face actually opened up genuinely for the first time as Sawyer found his retort and, for a few precious moments, there was an odd, almost inappropriate display of hope between them as something irreversible shattered in the atmosphere.

And strangely, for the reason which she still could not quite fathom, Juliet ducked her head to smile at their words. Her eyes darted towards Pickett and the other men, but they too hadn't moved since… since this.

She ran a hand through her blonde hair absently, as thoughts of Kate and Ben and Pickett, then of Jack and Sawyer, flew through her mind… And although she tried to figure out a grip on right and wrong, and _fathom_ men like Jack and Sawyer, Juliet's mind, and the Unfathomable Reason, had already decided for her. She hesitated, denying while she could what she was about to do. Then she looked at her watch.

They still had thirty minutes to work things out.


End file.
